The data process used to arrive at the administration’s determination that greenhouse gases endanger “the public health and welfare” violated the Environmental Protection Agency’s own peer review procedure, a new report from the EPA Office of the Inspector General reveals.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, requested this report in April, asking that the OIG determine whether the EPA “followed key federal and Agency regulations and policies in developing and reviewing the technical data used to make and support its greenhouse gases endangerment finding.” Now, Inhofe is calling for a series of hearings to further investigate the IG’s findings.

The Daily Caller’s Caroline May, with more:

“I appreciate the inspector general conducting a thorough investigation into the Obama-EPA’s handling of the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases,” Inhofe said. “This report confirms that the endangerment finding, the very foundation of President Obama’s job-destroying regulatory agenda, was rushed, biased and flawed. It calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.”

Inhofe lambasted the EPA for its failure to adhere to its own rules, outsourcing the science to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and refusing to conduct its own analysis of the science — in the period leading up to its final endangerment finding.

“The endangerment finding is no small matter: Global warming regulations imposed by the Obama-EPA under the Clean Air Act will cost American consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. This is not to mention the ‘absurd result’ that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [green house gas] regime. And all of this economic pain is for nothing: As EPA Administrator [Lisa] Jackson also admitted before the Environmental and Public Works] committee, these regulations will have no effect on the climate.”

You  know what doesn’t cost consumers billions of dollars each year, raise energy prices or destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs? Yep, you guessed it — drilling for natural gas. Just ask the Pennsylvanians who’ve benefited from all the activity surrounding the Marcellus Shale.

Yet the GOP has the rep as the anti-science party? I’ll never understand it.

P.S. You know that big building pictured in the thumbnail to this post? HQ of the EPA? I can’t help but wonder how it’s heated …